


the pictures in his mind arose

by gingerbread man (xphantomhive)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Homophobia, Homophobic Slurs, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inner Dialogue, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not something to read with mom and dad, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Self-Hatred, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5659144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xphantomhive/pseuds/gingerbread%20man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you do not like boys and dave should not be kissing you.</p><p>//</p><p>who is dave?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the pictures in his mind arose

The first time he kisses you, you’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder on his bed, and you are _crushing_ him in Mario Kart. You are thirteen and he is fourteen, and you’re staying at his apartment for the night. He takes your controller once you’ve beaten him for the fifth time in a row and throws it onto a beanbag chair across the room along with his own. Then he flicks the TV off and turns to face you. Your knees bump. He’s close enough for you to smell the apple juice he drank a few hours ago lingering in his breath.

“Hey Egbert,” he mumbles. “You had your first kiss yet?”

You shake your head because you can’t talk. Your throat is closing and your eyes are watering, and you can’t figure out why you feel like crying or why the idea of being kissed by Dave terrifies you so much. He leans closer and you gulp. His nose is pressed to yours, and you can feel a few of his stray hairs tickling your neck. Then he tilts his head up, angles it sideways, and pushes your lips together. His are soft, and against your cracked ones they feel even softer.

It takes you a minute to push him away, and you’re shaking when you do. He retreats to the opposite end of the bed, face impassive, but his hands are trembling and that tells you that he’s nervous and scared and maybe a little bit confused. You grab your stuff and run out of his bedroom without another word, and when you get home and tell your dad that Dave kissed you, he tells you that it’s wrong. You nod and accept it.

The next day, you walk over to Dave’s house and tell him that your dad says he’s a queer and you aren’t allowed to be friends with him anymore. He raises an eyebrow and his unbreakable poker face cracks when he frowns at you. “Queer? Is your dad a fuckin’ homophobe?”

You shrug. You realize, later, that you dad is homophobic and that’s why the idea of a boy kissing you scares you so much. It scares you because you’re afraid that, if you like boys more than girls, your dad will hate you.

//

The second time he kisses you, you’re playing spin the bottle at your friend Rose’s sixteenth birthday party. You haven’t spoken to him in years because your dad told you not to, but here he is, sitting across from you at Rose Lalonde’s birthday party. He still has the sunglasses you gave him, and he still looks as stoic as ever. You can’t tell if he’s looking at you. You kind of hope he is, and that makes your stomach twist in the most unpleasant way.

“You all know the rules, right?” Your cousin Jade Harley asks with a grin, sounding much more excited to get the game started than you feel about it. Everyone in the circle nods in affirmation, and you squirm and wring your hands. What if the bottle lands on you during Dave’s turn? Or what if the bottle lands on him during your turn?

Rose spins first, and it conveniently lands on her girlfriend Aranea. After you watch them kiss for maybe a little too long, you tune out until Jade is shoving your shoulder. When you snap out of your trance, she grins from ear to ear and says, “You gotta kiss Dave.”

Your stomach drops. This isn’t okay. Kissing a boy isn’t okay, your dad said so, and you know your dad is right because he’s your _dad_. Why would he lie to you? But you kiss Dave anyway, so you don’t look like a chicken in front of the girls - because they’re the ones you actually want to kiss, they’re the ones you wore your nicest outfit for today! - and ignore the voice in the back of your head spitting insults at you. It kind of sounds like your dad.

 _This is disgusting._ You _are disgusting. Why do you_ like _this? Why do you like the feeling of Dave’s fingers tangling in your hair, or his soft lips against your chapped ones? You fucking fag._

When he pulls away, you’re crying. He wipes your tears with his thumbs and the voice gets louder, louder, until it’s screaming over Dave and your friends and you can’t even feel the arms wrapping around you because you think you might be screaming, too.

//

The third time he kisses you, you’re seventeen and he’s staying over at your house. Your dad is on a business trip for a few days and you’re thankful for that, because if he knew you had Dave over (a  _fag_ ) he would blow a gasket. After Rose’s party, your friendship picked up again, and he never mentions that you cried after he kissed you.

He does it while you’re watching a rerun of _How I Met Your Mother._ His arm is already around your shoulders and the voice is a steady murmur in the back of your head, a reminder of how much of a faggot you are, of how no girl will ever love you, of how nobody will ever love you, not even your own father. You try to focus on the TV and pretend that the voice isn’t even there, remind yourself that it’s only in your head and it can’t hurt you.

Dave moves his arm and the voice goes silent, but then he turns to face you and you turn to face him and your knees bump. He leans close and your noses touch, and you know you should back away but he smells like cheap cologne and green apples and it slows your heartbeat. Then he tilts his head like the first time, angles it sideways like the first time, and pushes your mouth together like the first time. The voice comes back.

_You’re letting him do this again? You’re letting this faggot kiss you again? And you like it, don’t you? You’re as bad as he is, you fucking queer._

You shove him back faster than you did the first time but this time it’s you moving away from him, to the opposite side of your couch. “Don’t touch me, _don’t touch me_ ,” you splutter, almost in hysterics. Your eyes are watering and your stomach is turning. “I’m not gay, I am _not_ , I don’t like boys, I like girls because-”

“You’re supposed to,” he says softly, cutting you off. “Because you’re supposed to, because your dad wants you to.”

He starts shifting closer, and you scream at the top of your lungs. “Get _out_!”

You think he leaves, but you don’t know, because you’re too busy curling into yourself and trying to disappear. You pretend that you aren’t here and that Dave didn’t just kiss you again and you didn’t like it because you aren’t gay, you aren’t, you like girls because they’re pretty and soft and they smell good. You like girls. You want girls to kiss you and look at you and date you, not Dave, not Dave or any other boy. _Girls._

//

The fourth time he kisses you, you’re on the roof of his apartment. He’d just finished strifing with his Bro and he still has a sword in his hand and you’re pressed side-to-side, and the voice is getting harder and harder to ignore because you’re so _close_. When he looks away from you, you look at him, and the voice spits an insult. You look away. “It’s okay to like boys, you know,” he tells you quietly, like he’s speaking to a wounded animal. “Some girls like girls. Some boys like boys. I know your dad doesn’t get that, but that’s okay, John, he doesn’t have to.”

You sniffle. Your eyes are watering and it isn’t long before tears are pouring down your cheeks, splatting against the asphalt on the roof. “I like it when, uh,” you pause, pause to wipe at your tears and shut the voice out because _you are allowed to like boys you do not have to like girls just because your dad likes girls_. “Kissed. Me. The times before.”

“Do you want me to now?” He asks, and then he’s facing you and you face him on instinct. You know you aren’t supposed to want him to kiss you and you know your dad would be angry if he knew you wanted to, but your dad isn’t here right now. Dave is. Dave is here, and he is in front of you and he wants to know if you want him to kiss you.

_You._

You’re shaking when you say, “Yes.”

_Fucking._

He presses your mouths together softly and keeps his hands up like a robber that got caught by the police, and when you dart your hand out to grab his wrists and lay his hands on your shoulders he complies hesitantly. It’s an innocent kiss, not like ones you see on TV that are all slobbery and full of tongues. It’s gentle. His lips move against yours languidly, and it’s not a sloppy mess like you think it should be. It’s nice. Your stomach hurts but you feel _happy._

_Faggot._

//

You start dating Dave after that day, and when your dad finds you cuddled into his side watching a movie he kicks you out of the house. You cry for hours, face pressed to Dave’s chest, and he rubs circles in your back and tells you that it’s going to be okay, that you can come live with him and Bro because Bro is pretty cool and he won’t care.

For the first month, you feel like you’re intruding. Bro seems to hate you, and you bring this up to Dave sometimes, when you’re laying by his side at night, playing with his fingertips. He promises you that Bro doesn’t hate you, that he’s just kind of an asshole and he tends to act like that towards people until he warms up to them.

You guess Bro warms up to you by the third month, specifically by the fact that he ruffles your hair while you’re watching a movie and says, “What a shitty choice, kid,” but hops over the couch and watches it with you anyway.

Five months pass and you’re walking to the post office to get their mail for them everyday, and on a sunny Tuesday you find nothing but an unmarked letter. There’s no return address and no stamp, and you decide to take it with you and ask Dave about it. He’s standing in the doorway when you get home, waiting for you, probably. “Hey, I found an unmarked. What do you want me to do with it?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Read it, maybe? Tell me if it’s important.”

You nod and tear it open. Your heart stops beating when you read the lines, you can’t seem to get enough air to your lungs, and you feel like you’re dying. “Uh, Egbert? Important or no?”

You giggle, high and nervous. “No, uh! Nothing important.”

//

You wake up with your face pressed into a mattress.

The first thing you notice is that you can barely breathe, so you tilt your head and suck in as much air as you can at once. Your legs and arms have fallen asleep, and when you try to move to maybe wake them up you realize that everything hurts. It hurts, _it hurts_ , it’s a deep aching pain that starts in your head and spreads all the way to your toes. Where are you? Where is this? You were just with Dave, weren’t you? Where’s _Dave_?

After a few minutes of shifting you manage to turn yourself onto your back, and you look up and see that your wrists are chained to a wall. Your arms are covered in bruises, some yellowing and some still black and blue, clearly fresh. You look down at your legs and find that they’re cut, cut all over, from your thighs to your knees to your shins. Where is _Dave_ ? Where are _you_?

There’s a chain on your ankle, too, you see. It’s attached to a hook on the wall. Everything is blurry and you guess you don’t have your glasses. You shift again and feel something dribble down your legs; you hear it hit the dirty mattress beneath you.

You don’t know what it is and you’re scared to look, but you do anyway. You may be half-blind but you can tell what blood looks like, and mixed in with the blood is some white substance that you wish was unidentifiable but you know _exactly_ what it is. Now you’re panicking. There’s an ache in your chest, in your lungs, and _oh god why can’t you breathe why can’t you breathe_?

“Dave?” You ask tentatively, and you get no reply. “Dave!”

The door on the other side of the room opens. You cringe at the sound, a loud squeak that hurts your ears and makes them ring. A person steps inside, but it isn’t Dave. It isn’t someone you’ve ever seen before, actually. They’re tall, six feet at least, and they’re wearing some combat boots and an entirely black outfit otherwise. They’re wearing a hat and you can’t see much of their face other than their mouth, but they give you a sinister grin and it’s enough to make you whimper.

“How’re you doing, dear?” They ask with mock-kindness. “Good? Good. Who’s Dave?”

You blink once. Twice. Thrice. Who _is_ Dave? You’ve never heard that name before, you don’t know who that is. In fact, who are _you_? Do you have a name? Maybe it’s on the tags on the collar around your neck. You’d check, but you’re tired and your body refuses to let you move more than an inch. “I…” you start, rubbing at your eyes. Your arm aches in protest. “Dunno.”

The person grins. They stalk over to you on long legs and kneel by the mattress, and you try to get away from them, back yourself into a corner. “Aw, don’t be frightened! I’m here to make you feel good, love - that’s all I want to do,” they assure you, voice soft. And you trust them. You trust them and you move closer, closer, and spread your legs. They reach forward and grab you through the too-short shorts you’re wearing. They squeeze. You aren’t even hard. “I want you to feel good.”

“No, please,” you whimper quietly, and they squeeze harder. You feel yourself getting hard even though it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts, and more blood drips down your legs. “Please! No, no, no no no no no not again don’t _do this don’t do this let me go_!”

Your shouts reach deaf ears.They tug the shorts and your underwear down in one go, and you cry and sob and scream and try, try, to remember who Dave is.

**Author's Note:**

> surprise motherfucker.
> 
> so in case you aren't familiar with where a concept like this spawns from, it's based on the creepypasta "wake up." so. that's. a thing, i guess.
> 
> i hope you enjoyed this? as fucked up as it was? i want to write psychostriders and i don't know if i'd be very good at it, so if this freaked you out, lemme know because i might just take a crack at psychostriders.


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